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Project for Graduation

Okay, so I’m in my internship for student teaching this semester. I’m at a wonderful school, and my students are pretty awesome, most days of the week. They are bright, beacons of knowledge and very flexible. Which has been great with all of the testing that has been going on for the last three weeks. We wrap up on Monday! Part of my student teaching semester is doing this project called the edTPA. It really isn’t that bad. I mean, it does suck. It is a ton of additional work on top of planning lessons, grading assignments, faculty meetings, my on campus class requirements and meetings times. It isn’t really fun, it is very time consuming and comes out to about 75 pages upon completion.

Here is the kicker. My university requires that we do the edTPA. They have been telling us for the last three or four years since they started this process that they were requiring us to complete it because it will be a state license requirement. Well, less than a month ago, the state decided that they were going to bench all discussion on the edTPA and begin to explore other avenues in regards to assessing graduating teachers. Alright, so my university is still requiring we submit and obtain a score that they (the university) has determined as a passing score. Okay, cool, whatever. I have already done a portion of this thing anyways. Sure, I would rather toss it in the garbage and focus on my teaching completely but I can roll with it.

But the worst part of this to me is the edTPA costs $300 to take. My husband is also in the same major as I am, that is how we met. So we paid a total of $600 for this assessment, that doesn’t really matter on a resume because no one is really using it as a license requirement in most states. $300 is a month worth of groceries. $300 is almost three months worth of cell phone bills. $300 is 7.5 months of electric, without using our air conditioner. $300 goes a long way for us. The only reason our university is requiring we still submit, is one of our department heads full out supports everything that Pearson (creators of the edTPA) does. Which great, she believes in something. Wonderful, that is her prerogative. But $300 for the average college student is a big deal. I’m literally throwing that money away. This score will affect nothing. It doesn’t even really benefit me to put my score on a resume as the score needed to pass isn’t even well established. It’s just super annoying.

So, anyways, what is the cost of getting a middle level teacher degree (at least in the state of Ohio)?

That isn’t that bad. It makes me hate how much I have in student loan debt, just that much more…but my husband and I were idiots with our money and we took out the full loan amounts each and every year. What do we have to show for it? A mega crap ton in debt. It has taken us both, six years to graduate though. I was pushed back in my course of study due to a car accident, and my husband was on a mission to pass calc 2, but after three tries gave up, which tanked his GPA. He lived at home for three years and I lived on campus for three years. I’m from outside their commuting zone…but like 200 miles!